Small arms weapons training uses relatively costly ammunition and is inherently dangerous. Thus, various dry-fire training systems have been developed. There is a particular need for such a dry-fire training system in the area of firearms training for law enforcement and the military because realistic training is critical to the effective use of firearms in crisis situations. However, conventional firearms training does not enable the average shooter to develop the muscle memory necessary to quickly and accurately acquire a target or effectively make a decision regarding use of a firearm in a high-stress situation.
It is extremely difficult to create an effective dry-fire system that simulates live-fire practice. For example, it is conventional to array a plurality of light emitters such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) across a target. A gun-mounted focal plane imager such as a CCD or CMOS pixel array then images the emitters. Although relatively inexpensive, focal plane imagers have limited frame rates. For example, a conventional frame rate is 30 frames per second. Such a sensor can thus image the target emitters only 30 times a second. This is problematic in that it improves simulation accuracy if the focal plane imager can distinguish between groups of LEDs. In that regard, it is conventional to modulate the emitters with different flashing or blinking frequencies. But a sampling rate of 30 times a second can only distinguish up to a 15 Hz difference in modulation frequencies. Thus, the limited frame rate of conventional focal plane imagers greatly restricts the frequency band across which various LEDs could be assigned unique modulation frequencies.
Another problem for conventional focal plane imager dry-fire systems is that complex image processing techniques are required in that the various target emitters are focused onto groups of pixels on the array. To find the various pixels corresponding to each focused target emitter requires an examination of each pixel and correspondingly complex image processing schemes.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for relatively inexpensive yet accurate dry-fire training systems.